The past few weeks I’ve really enjoyed the advantages of being “plugged in” online — specifically with regards to how it’s influencing my opinion on the political race for president. Throughout Facebook, MySpace and Twitter my social network of friends are loudly voicing their opinions. Did I mention LOUDLY? It’s exciting to watch to the speeches on TV while being plugged into Twitter and Facebook on my cell phone. I’m getting real-time feedback as it happens. It makes me laugh, think twice about specific topics and sometimes — it even makes me angry.

Since my friends are constantly posting to Facebook and Twitter I’ve been able to “paint a picture” if you will, of each of the different opinions my individual friends have. Because of that anonymity of the Internet, friends who usually don’t talk politics have a domain in which they can are freely expressing their thought. Furthermore, not all of my friends have I met personally face-to-face. It’s exciting to learn “that much more” about the thoughts of those friends whom my interaction has only been conducted online.

On a more philosophical note, I truly believe this election in general is extremely refreshing! You can’t deny that the Millennial generation has more choices in life than any other generation than ever before. Think about it — there are more options than ever; music, books, food, technology and schools — and I truly believe this paradigm has influenced politics. What I mean by that is, since there are more choices available in life, several of my friends are also finding themselves in a bipartisan position about politics. It’s interesting to see this shift happen, and now people are comfortable with freely voting for who they truly believe can this great country the best. Furthermore, its arguably socially acceptable to jump party lines.

Regardless of where you stand, it’s going to be an exciting race — one of which I’m truly enjoying learning, educating and watching it all unfold.
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Earlier this year Microsoft released an application called Photosynth. What does Photosynth do? You take a bunch of photos of something, shoot a bunch from angles. They say it’s best to have between 20 and 300 photos (I took 316 photos). It creates a 3D mesh of all the photos that you can “walk” through. There are several demo Photosynths on the site.

Check out the one I did of my room, below (click around on the buttons to explore!). How cool is this!?! Nice work Microsoft, a product that is well executed and easy to use.

The blogosphere in the past few months have been buzzing about Public Relations. Specifically, there has been discussion about the changing role of PR and the social media space. My disclaimer before you read the rest of this post: I’m not an expert in PR — but based on my experience and personal knowledge, I have some thoughts in regards to this recent discussion and the “Social Media Release”.

In my opinion the “Social Media Release” is only one piece of a two part puzzle. There’s a distinct difference between the Social Media Release and having a Social Media Strategy. In my mind, PR should not only understand these are growing trends… they should already be doing it, and perfecting it.

So what’s a social media release?
It’s a clean, clear, humanized press release. It should be outward focused (on the customer and audience). Similar to a 140 character Twitter message, it should be short and sweet — and it should lead with the “meat and potatoes” first and be supported with the finer details farther into the text (also known as the inverted pyramid approach).

Most importantly it should the ingredients for what truly makes it a social media release:

• embeddable content
• embeddable photos
• embeddable video
• links to other relevant websites
• key quotes and testimonials from the source
• the use of social tools to bookmark it (digg, delicious, facebook)
• tags for indexing, SEO and discoverability (so there’s an understanding of what keywords are relevant)
• subscriptions via RSS

Bottom line, a social media release gives you everything you need to discover/learn, share, and MOST importantly — everything you need to retell the story.

The second piece to the puzzle is having a Social Media Strategy. This is having the wherewithal and experience of how to engage in the right areas online to publish and post your information. It also needs to be within the areas it’s most relevant and has value. Brian Solis recently created a helpful ‘Conversation Prism’, a chart that illustrates where conversations are taking place in the online space.

The implications? No longer does your website function as just the hub in which you disseminate out information. Much like in marketing, where the people are communicating — you should be there too, engaged as well.

On a more holistic level, PR is shifting to a role of understanding how to tap the key influencers online and/or allow anyone to have the necessary assets to provide their take on the story. Being a gatekeeper of information shouldn’t be the focus in PR. Establishing an open relationship and conversation with the people who are writing the stories is what it’s all about. It’s happening already — except people are going about extracting the information on their own (also referred to as the groundswell). PR should embrace and augment the “story creation” process for bloggers and people online. While it’s scary to swallow, it’s about enabling audiences to take your information and run with it.

*UPDATE* If you want to see an example of how CNN is already embracing this shift, see a great example of a recent social media release here.

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If you are in the corporate world grind, or have read a business magazine within the past two years, at some point you’ve come across the phrase Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0 anyways? What is Web 3.0? You and most people out there have no freakin’ clue what that even means. Well Marc Benioff, the chairman and CEO of SalesForce.com, wrote a great article on TechCrunchIT that gives one perspective of what “Web 3.0″ means — it’s short and succinct and well worth your attention.

Web 3.0 by his definition, is “the shift” in software as web-based applications, in an environment stored “in the cloud” — that can be done anywhere.

He also does a great job of also backtracking and defining the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 as well:

Web 1.0: Anyone Can Transact
…the emergence of the “killer app” from companies like eBay, Amazon.com, and Google. Although we thought of them as Web sites at the time, they were really amazing applications with a level of functionality, ease of use, and scale that had rarely been seen before by the average consumer. Transactions, not just of goods but of knowledge, became ubiquitous and instant.

Web 2.0: Anyone Can Participate
…the next generation of applications on the Internet, featuring user-generated content, collaboration, and community. Anyone can participate in content creation. Posting a viral video on YouTube, tagging photos from a party on Flickr, or writing about politics on Blogspot requires no technical skill, just an Internet connection. Participation changes our idea of content itself: content isn’t fixed at the point of publication — it comes alive.

Web 3.0: Anyone Can Innovate
…it changes all of this by completely disrupting the technology and economics of the traditional software industry. The new rallying cry of Web 3.0 is that anyone can innovate, anywhere. Code is written, collaborated on, debugged, tested, deployed, and run in the cloud. When innovation is untethered from the time and capital constraints of infrastructure, it can truly flourish.

While I personally cringe when anyone utters these buzzwords, these are in fact real movements of the Web that are important to understand for anyone in business (not just for us geeks). The shift of some form of platform as a service in the cloud is only going to continue to increase.
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“…’great’ must be in the eye of the target, not the creator. Post-click must deliver what that target was seeking when they clicked in a way that’s clear and comfortable for them. That’s what works.”

This quote encapsulates the importance of designing websites from the end-user perspective. It’s a simple principal — but it makes all difference in fulfilling the expectations of the audience you are targeting.

Fellow video blogger and old Justin.TV friend iJustine a.k.a. Justine Ezarik blogged about which iPhone apps she’s currently got installed on her iPhone. While I don’t have 5 entire pages filled with apps like she does, I’ve got my fair share.

(click the image to enlarge)

Steve Jobs shared some information in today’s Wall Street Journal article, regarding the Apple app store:

• There have already been 60 million downloads, the majority of them free.
• Paid downloads have pulled in about $30 million in revenues in the first 30 days.

TechCrunch also provided some interesting insight on the sheer number of apps one even uses:

“The question is how many apps can one person really manage before becoming overwhelmed. While the initial impulse is to download as many apps as possible to try them out, there is a limit to how many apps you can juggle on your iPhone. It is not much different than a PC. You have tons of apps, but how many do you actually use on a regular basis?“

While I’d like to believe that apps will continue to improve and build upon the 3G iPhone capabilities, there are critics that believe that these apps are going to hit a saturation point real soon. I know in my own personal day to day usage — the ones I use (starting with the most frequently used): SMS, Email, Safari, Notes and AIM.
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Last week eMarketer published an article titled, “Retail Shoppers Hit the Web First“.

“Eight out of 10 respondents who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick-and-mortar store said they had visited the store’s Website first, according to a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey. More than one-half said they purchased from the retailer on whose Website they had spent the most time.”

…the article then goes on to describe:

“If they had to choose just one method of researching their purchases, 58% of respondents said they would choose the Internet — far more than would choose their own friends and family.” Only 8% chose friends and family.

To me, this is a no brainer, I’m a digital native. However it should be a LOUD message to those Marketers, Executives, and CEOs out there who don’t view the web as a major component of your marketing communication strategy. When is the last time you reviewed what you’re providing online? Is it timely, relevant, and adding value to your personas that are finding you online?  It better be.
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I read an article in the New York Times regarding last months launch of www.criminalsearches.com. Essentially it’s a free service that lets you search government records criminal backgrounds. And you can search for everyone… in every state. Keep in mind, it’s using all public data that’s available — except now it’s online and for free. Whoaaaaa - what!?!

“…the site draws data directly from local courthouses and offers records of arrests and convictions in connection with everything from murder to minor infractions like blowing past a stop sign — at least for jurisdictions that include traffic violations in their criminal data. It also lets users view a map showing addresses and names of all those arrested or convicted of a crime in a specific neighborhood, and to place alerts that prompt e-mail when someone in their life gets busted or someone with a record moves in nearby (via).”

It’s increasingly more common for everyone — not just HR departments to “Google” your name to see what kind of information they can find out about you. I’m sure there are critics out there that will say this is “creepy” and “unfair”. However, if the information is not restricted in any way, placing it online for reference is was inevitable. Try it out, you know you want to .

» www.criminalsearches.com

Have you ever made a phone call praying to someone’s voicemail, and the person picks up? Doh. I can name two scenarios that just happened in the past week. In some situations, you struggle for words because you weren’t expecting the person to pick up

Translated and abstracted; “I want to communicate something to you, but I don’t want to DIRECTLY communicate with you.” Enter Slydial, a phone service that essentially connects you directly to someone’s mobile voicemail.

Whaaaat!?! Ramsey, that’s silly. Why would you ever want to go directly to voicemail?

Well — think about it… it’s a brilliant cheat and an illusion of communication. You can leave late night happy birthday voicemails, avoid talking to your boss to tell him you’re late, dump your girlfriends, avoid a long convos with your parents, and leave client direct voicemails and not interrupt your/their workflow (I do openly acknowledge that if you use this service for these reasons, you can argue it’s a not-so-valiant character trait to possess).

The service is free (you have to listen to an advertisement) so I tried it out for myself. All you do is call 267-759-3425 and then enter the mobile number you want to connect to voicemail. Annnnnnd sure enough it works like it says it does. Pretty slick. So now I’ve added slydial to my contacts list — we’ll see if it comes in handy in the upcoming week.

The idea and concept of this service made me step back and want to catalog technologies/mediums we use for communication. In my opinion, these are in order from highly direct, to least personal:

1.) Face-to-Face
2.) Phone
3.) Instant Messenger
4.) Voicemail
5.) Text Messaging
6.) Email
7.) Letter/Postal Mail

What’s interesting about the introduction of the service Slydial — is the use of technology to deceive. No one can deny we are slaves to our devices that allow us to be reachable and connected (i’m guilty). I think it’s a important skill in life to understand when and what medium to choose from the list above.

Does Slydial cross the line of morality? Is it even ethical to use such a service? You can argue that Slydial is just a compliment to the medium itself. In my opinion, I think it all depends on the situation and the person, but ultimately Slydial can help a person concerned with efficiency and time. In retrospect, it also can greatly benefit cowardly people who like to avoid direct communication.
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Earlier this week you may have heard the “buzz” regarding the launch of the new search engine “Cuil“. The components of the launch all seemed to be “storybook” — the company was positioned as direct competition to Google (in theory), heavily invested, created by Ex-Google workers, claims that the search technology had a farther and more effective …all of the components seemed to add up to one all-to-good-to-be-true story. Could there really be competition brewing to “the great Oz” aka Google?

Fail.

I happened to catch the Twitters while walking the streets of New York about the launch — so I opened up my mobile browser and searched for my full name on www.cuil.com, only to be disappointed that the servers were too slammed for the site to even work.

Being a web consultant myself at Digital Evolution Group — launching a website is hard. It’s never an easy task. With its Ex-Google employee history and $33 million dollars in funding, you would think it would have taken more calculated steps, especially for a site launch that garnered so much press. This of course, is all much easier said than done.

Regardless, the lesson learned is potentially a fatal one for Cuil as a company — “details matter”. Cuil knew it was going to be hit hard but failed to consider all the angles. They knew they were going to get lots of traffic that could potentially bring the site down, why not endorse a “beta” logo or disclose any type of “pre-launch” or “in testing” disclaimer. Why not also place this same type of verbiage within its error messages? Why not provide transparency to the lack of testing done prior to launch on the site?

It’s failure to do so instantly has tarnished it’s credibility. End-users had the expectation the site was complete and ready for use.  Now, it could be argued that the majority of people who had a “bad first-time experience” will ever consider using it again. Just a little attention to detail, with a minimal amount of development effort would have possibly placed them in a much better light across the blogger community, but more importantly with the general public.  Now, when I ask my friends about their thoughts on the Cuil it’s unanimous — “what a complete failed attempt to beat Google”.
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I have a lot of ideas. They’re not all that great. However, I consider myself entrepreneurial by nature and I’m lucky enough that my job and friends all help foster this type of thought on a daily basis. That being said, I have no problem sharing my ideas because I’m a firm believer that at the end of the day — it’s not the idea that counts, it’s the quality of the execution and level of thought put into the delivery. After all, Apple wasn’t the first to make a MP3 player. Feel free to rip me apart and tell me all the BAD parts of this idea below.

Facebook Application Name:
EventCast (don’t really like the name, but it’s all I got at this point)

20 word description:
Chat, socialize and interact with anyone in the world about a major scheduled event you are watching or participating in.

The 6-second “Elevator Speech”:
An EventCast is a simple basic chat ‘n share application that lets you communicate while any major event is taking place. It allows anyone to connect instantly with a group who have the same interest to be watching or participating in an event.

The “really in depth” description:
The basis of the site is just giving people a centralized place to go during the time of a major event to chat and communicate (think Super Bowl, American Idol episodes, MTV Music Awards, Greys Anatomy episodes, The Oscars, Sport Playoff Games, The Office episodes, Miss America etc). That’s all it is.

Picture this: The Super Bowl is on tonight. You are taking it easy this year and watching it with a small group. You pull out your MacBook then power up your social graph via Facebook on your laptop or cell phone. You click and jump into the official ” ‘09 Super Bowl EventCast” app and you’re instantly connected to any of your friends who are logged into Facebook. You also have the ability to bail from your own friends free to float to different rooms with other FB users.

The first commercial comes on — the chat room is blowing up. It’s another hilarious Bud Light commercial that everyone will be talking about tomorrow at work or school. Your buddy from college makes a funny joke about the chimp in the commercial. You then have the ability to digg vote up (thumbs up icon) on any comment or chat messages people send within your room. If it scores enough of a majority “a really complex algorithm” sends the message as a global message imported to other rooms chat feeds in your network — and if it is voted up there it’s placed globally to all the EventCast rooms on FB.

The idea really is simple. A place to hangout with your friends (who live on Facebook already) when you can’t physically hangout — and it’s all centered around major events you’re likely to be watching anyways. It can also serve as a reminder tool for you as a user so you don’t miss things you might be interested in like the The Olympics or The Presidential Debates. The application could send reminders and invitations asking to see if you want to participate. It could text you minutes before its about to start to make sure you don’t miss out.

There are other things you could do like…

• Make an iPhone app that would stream the chat so you could even be at a park, at a bar, in a airport or sitting on your couch and still participate “on the go”.
• Get corporate sponsors to place advertisements throughout the event on the web application itself.
• Have moderators provide “interactive” components/links in real-time to view more detail of any given topic. For example, you can click-through on the e-Trade website to find out more information on the AD they just aired as a commercial. Companies can choose to advertise their event is “being EventCast’ed” LIVE and to log-in for an “interactive experience.”
• Guest chat hosts could also interact with users — for example, sport broadcasters or designated bloggers can give their real-time feedback on their experience on what it’s like to be there. Users can ask direct questions to the people at the event.

So is it stupid? Does it already exist? (if it does, is it executed well?) Is it a decent idea with a lack of focus? One of these days I’ll actually build out one of my ideas. I hope someone beats me to this one…
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Today the domain extension .me went for sale exclusively on GoDaddy.com. Like women at a 6 AM Bloomingdales wedding dress sale, utter organized chaos was unleashed on GoDaddy.com as users scrambled to pick-up .me domains (likely to cash in on a resale). Of course when the dust settled (after 5 PM) was when I had my first chance to take a crack at .me domain names. Which ones did I try to register? Well I tried…

ramsey.me
mini.me
aweso.me
gim.me
upti.me
screw.me
lunchti.me

At one point, I even used a Scrabble tool to find suggestions of things ending with .me. With the exception of ramsey.me, each domain name I tried was taken. [sigh], so much for making it rich with a clever domain name. In hindsight, when the .mobi extension was released — everyone (and I do mean everyone) thought it was going to be the HOT domain to have. Fast forward to present day and now the .mobi address is almost never used. More so, even a geek like me can’t name but one or two .mobi domains from memory. Inevitably what happened is most companies are using sub-domains to accommodate for mobile visitors (e.g. http://m.facebook.com, http://m.cnn.com, http://mobile.espn.com).

All that said — competition still remains “hot” for domain names. On my way to work it’s practically religious ritual that I listen to NPR on my 20-minute commute (music doesn’t go well with me early in the morning). Last month there was a great segment regarding, “Though the economy may be in decline, the market for Web site domain names is on the rise.” It’s an interesting report, and you can listen to it here.
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Back in 2007, Steve Jobs described a feature released on the original iPhone called Starbucks Select:

“You walk into a Starbucks. Order your latté. While you wait, you hear a song wafting from the loudspeakers. You love it. So you get out your iPhone and buy it over Wi-Fi. Just like that. The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store on iPhone tells you what’s playing in select Starbucks and lets you buy it along with other featured Starbucks content.”

Back in ‘07, I remember thinking this was the beginning of a great business model that could grow outside of just purchasing a song at Starbucks. But Apple has not moved forward with it.

Think about it… why draw the line at just selling Starbucks music? Why not something in more functional everyday commerce areas like retail stores, concerts, festivals or any event.

• What if… if you were at a concert and you had the ability to pull your phone out and order the album that’s being played on stage? Why not give people the ability to order the t-shirt and have it shipped to their house so they don’t have to carry it around? Let them order the album of the opening act or make a donation on-the-spot to the artist’s favorite charity.

• What if… while watching the Super Bowl you were able to get real-time updates pushed to your iPhone as commercials aired allowing you to bookmark for more information later or buy the product right away?

• What if… while watching American Idol you can purchase the shirt David Cook is wearing on stage? This would of course be done through an American Idol iPhone Application — in which you could vote for contestants and watch previous performances.

• What if… [insert more great ideas I haven't thought of yet here]

While I’m unfamiliar with the technical requirements it takes to setup a wi-fi base that once connected you’re iPhone would load a “Store Application”. I’m assuming with the launch of the App Store and it’s API, this in theory, could be relatively simple for the folks at Apple. Another alternative I’d offer: instead requiring developers to code a “Store Application” from scratch — is Apple could offer an application that resides in the next firmware update (universal user interface, few customizations here and there, standardized checkout — essentially give developers places to slot graphics, products, prices and descriptions). This would allow developers to then utilize an API to setup their own custom settings within using the web service. There could even be a per transaction fee Apple can mandate in order to monetize the Application.

Is my idea that far fetched? I’m sure critics would argue not enough users have an iPhone for this to be worth the investment on either Apple or the businesses. To which I would point out one million people purchased a 3G iPhone during is launch weekend. Is that enough users?

These are just thoughts, sparks, ideas… what are you waiting for Apple?
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**UPDATE** This post was featured on !  How cool is that?  Check out the article that mentions this blog post.

While there was some frustration, camping out for my 3G Apple iPhone was a great experience. I met some great people and got the phone I’ve been waiting over a year for

When I showed up at 10:40′ish PM on Thursday night excitement was in the air. The night was filled with 10 hours of waiting in line, a 1 hour nap on a concrete sidewalk, a Starbucks donut and Frap, lectures from the shopping mall security force and quality entertainment from a “New Jersey” dude that heckled everyone at will (it was hilarious).

Watch the video of my interview on Fox 4 News here.

NBC quoted me in this article and click the video in the top right, I’m featured in an interview!

I also video blogged and audio blogged my entire experience which you can watch below:

I read a great article that gives a good inside look on the powerful effects of social media — specifically how the Barack Obama’s campaign staff has successfully utilized grasped leveraged new-media. Here are few things I didn’t know about www.My.BarakObama.com:

• One of the four founders of Facebook created/manages his online presence (Chris Hughes).

• Obama has raised over $2 million dollars online.

• MyBarakObama.com has over 900k members.

• The campaign has spent over $3 million in online advertising.

The growth strategy was positioned on a simple concept; “keep it real, and keep it local”. Similar to Facebook, his website is built around the concept of establishing “local networks” to make connections to other users. Supporters are more receptive because they are meaningful connections that literally “hit them at home” with familiar people they may or may not already know in their community.

In my own opinion, the big takeaway is the execution and strategy. Understanding how to market online in a “web 2.0″ world is no longer optional — it’s something you must address. Why should you care about social media and having a strategy? Well, five of the Top Ten most traffic’ed websites are social networking websites. YouTube is over 10% of all Internet traffic. Over 100 million blogs exist.

There’s more than a few reasons to care.

More importantly, “being everywhere” in which users visit on a daily basis is key. No longer can you just live in your own www.domain. Two way communication must occur across multiple touch points (online and offline).

MyBarakObama.com did does a good job of building a community and carrying the consistent “Change We Can Believe In” brand message — but what it really does well is provide tools to its supporters by leveraging the viral benefits of social media. Obama’s staff understands how to plan, build, evolve, and execute a communication strategy online that adds value to its supporters. This has resulted in a tightly nit loyal community online that wants to use it and finds it exciting.

While I’ve noted his site as a great case study of reference for my own clients, he does serve specifically as a political social media “road map” for several new campaigns to come.
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As a web consultant, I lead and manage the design of web projects.   So naturally anything that brings “sparks” in regards to strategy interest me. I came across an awesome snippet of in regards to corporate website design.  A simple question was posed on the blog Web Strategy, “What is the future of Corporate Websites in 5 years?” This answer from Chris Smith rocked my world when I read it — so many thoughts came to my mind in regards to user-experience:

“I actually believe in 5 years the “corporate website” as we now it will no longer exist. Gone will be the days of the static brochure site, supported by a “dynamic” sub-branded social community. There will no longer be the “self-service” document download centers, or the video case study hiding the infomercial inside.

I see the corporate website as hub of individuals that become your first point of contact, and guide you through your search for products, service or support. Consider the example of the Apple Retail Store experience and extend that to the web. You are going to the corporate site for a reason. Even casual browsers to a corporate site have a passive agenda. Virtual corporate ambassadors will assist you in your interaction with the company, blurring the lines of sales, CRM, and support, with the use of chat, video feed, guided browsing, VoIP… the list goes on.”

Chris’s insight is right inline with the trend of user-focused web sites that utilize social media to “engage in the conversation“.  Furthermore, this concept is it really isn’t as far off as it may seem.  The web is already integrated as a utilitarian function for our daily lives, why keep the medium passive?  The technology is there can be there.  We’ve all seen “sprinkles” of this on web sites today, like Sprint.com — they ask you if you would like to “begin a live chat” to answer any questions.

This snippet of insight from Chris takes the concept to a new level.  I love it.
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After listening to this report on NPR, it’s interesting to think about the fact the Internet HAS shifted the way we think. Being that the Internet is “always on” and you can access it “whenever you want it” — the report discusses how people have adapted their way of consuming information because the Internet allows you to digest information quickly and lets you jump around to other interests easily.

In a related personal experience, this weekend I was at dinner with friends and someone mentioned that she reads an entire book once a week. I was shocked.  I told her that you could argue reading books are a “dieing pastime” for all the Millennial’s and Generation Y‘ers out there. With a book you are not able to jump to new topics that interests you quickly (like you can with email, articles, video, chat, and music online). In the end, the entire table did conclude that books will never be obsolete (which I didn’t disagree with either).

So is the internet bad for our health?  Does it negatively affect the way we think?  Based on my own personal anecdotal reasoning I would strongly disagree.   Consuming information online forces us to increase our “quality of thought”. We’ve formed daily routines (Google’ing) and adapted how we find information. Personally, I’m able to provide shorter, quicker, succinct communication (whatever it may be; phone conversations, emails, presentations, casual conversation).

That’s my take. What do you think?   Are you dumb because of the Internet?  Do you feel it’s helped or hurt you more in other areas in life?
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